Apple announced that they are now shipping OS X Server. Long awaited since its demonstration at MacWorld Expo San Francisco and MacWorld Expo Tokyo earlier this year, MacOS X Server is the first major product from the marriage of NeXT and Apple that combines the power of the NeXT OS and the Mac OS. This version of MacOS X is aimed primarily at the server market having been highly tuned for serving purposes. Better yet, the package is being priced at US$499 per server, a pricing policy aimed directly at Microsoft which licenses Windows NT on a per-user basis. According to Apple:

Mac OS X Server is built on a modern, high-performance and reliable operating system foundation and includes powerful services designed for Apple's Internet development, design and publishing, and education customers. As well as being the fastest Apache web server platform for under $5000, Mac OS X Server is also faster than Windows NT Server in high bandwidth file throughput tests.

Other key Mac OS X Server features include: A modern foundation, based on Mach and BSD 4.4, which provides performance and stability through full preemptive multitasking, protected memory and advanced virtual memory. Apache 1.3.4, the HTTP server used by over half the web sites on the Internet, which scales from workgroups to Internet sites capable of handling millions of hits per day. Apache leverages the power of Open Source development to deliver a feature-rich web serving solution. WebObjects 4.01, Apple?s market-leading application server platform for development and deployment of high-performance, large-scale Internet and intranet applications. With major advances in ease of application development, performance and Java functionality, WebObjects 4 is a milestone release, and now supports Macintosh Server G3 systems in addition to UNIX and Windows NT platforms.

NetBoot, a new feature which allows a network of Macs to be booted and configured from a single server, making network administration as easy as running a single Mac. With NetBoot, all Macs on a network share the same base system and applications stored on the server. NetBoot enables full control of user access, allowing users to securely access their own applications, documents and personal desktop preferences from any Macintosh on the network. Scalable Apple file services, capable of supporting over 1,000 users and thousands of open files. Users can access files from any AppleShare client over TCP/IP or AppleTalk network protocols. Additionally, all file server operations may be managed remotely using web-based remote administration tools.

The Mac Observer Spin: Wooooohooooooo!!!! OK, the gloves are off now. Apple has an operating system that keep up with Windows NT and surpass it in some areas. Of course native application support is not there yet like it is for Windows NT but there have already been many MacOS X Server applications released. Apache is the most important of these apps and it is ready to go. Apache runs more web servers than you can shake a stick at and MacOS X is probably now one of the finest web servers on the market.

Throw in NetBoot and Mac-run businesses just became a very powerful options that many businesses and government offices may find very desirable.